Schematic: half baked
SPACE, E8
Sam Kastin
Most promotional material for the current exhibition at SPACE Schematic focuses around a photograph of what is perhaps the exhibition’s centre piece, Peter Fleming’s Canoe- a metallic canoe shaped frame holding a large opaque plastic bag full of water placed directly under a wooden oar controlled by a circular motor. What this image alludes to, other than the subversion of making the external internal and therefore stilted, is the sound of water being paddled. However, when we enter the gallery there is no manifestation of the tranquillity created through hearing water softly flow just the jarring noises of an uncontested circular motor. This is not artistic tomfoolery playing with audience expectations. Instead SPACE has, for reasons unbeknownst to me, chosen to display the exhibit without the aforementioned liquid element. On top of this you have to take into account that two of the exhibits at the viewing just plain don’t work functionally leaving the exhibition with less than half of its displayed material fully intact. Something which made me suspect that perhaps the promotional photograph was taken at a gallery that actually respects the work on show.
On its own merits the exhibition is hardly invigorating. If you cannot understand human fascination with automatons there is nothing here which will shed any light onto this perverse beguilement. Much has been made of this allurement to machines; robots with human attributes have been an all too common narrative arc in many a science fiction- the robot becoming its own race in at least a fictional manner. To the exhibition’s credit there is an attempt to escape this now clichéd Pinocchio manner of looking at machines but it is an ambition steeped in hubris. The only time we mentally engage with a robot is when it does something significantly human like being tickled by a cockroach on an abandoned Earth. So, none of these works are particularly engaging. Of all the pieces present only one tries, in some slight way, to emulate human behaviours; Norman White’s The Helpless Robot, an automaton with no pullies or motors relying solely on the visitors for its movement. Perhaps Mr. White should be applauded for creating, with its awful recorded voice and dull design, an automaton that is nearly as irritating and boring as any person you could ever care to meet but probably not.
The most engaging automaton at the display is not actually on display but available upon request at the front desk. ADB by Nicholas Steadman is based on the computer system Deep Blue which beat the Russian grandmaster of chess Garry Kasparov by reading responding to every move he made individually. The small contraption interacts with the person holding its touch in such a way that it would almost be cute if it weren’t so unappealing to look at. This said I did hear the front of house attendant remarking to a visitor that she wished it was around the previous day because it could have possibly cheered her up a little, which I think can’t be a bad thing really.
Norman White’s “dull” and Stedman’s “unappealing” are part of an almost entirely greying milieu. It is a universally ugly exhibition and not in a good way. Possibly the worst item on show is Joe Mckay’s The Big Job with its large sheet of paper being looped to change colour from blue to white. Once the transition is completed a bell is rung and rather than anything profound happening, like an angel getting its wings, the machine merely continues its looping. This mortal coil which Mckay is hinting at has been a popular and fertile conceit amongst artists for centuries, and especially post 1945, however he treats it far too glibly and there is little going on artistically to justify its exploration. In a similar boat is Germaine Koh’s Fair Weather Forces which has too little going on maintenance wise to justify its presence. Because of its inability to work all the viewer has to observe is a rather unoriginal piece of found art.
And so although I personally have often been filled with a sense of insignificance whilst looking out into space, on this particular occasion I felt that it was SPACE who was the insignificant one and not I, that mere spec in a vast universe who wonders how long this gallery can indulge on its current complacency.
samkastin@gmail.com